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Last week's Iranian missile tests prompted another round of
fevered speculation that war might erupt between Iran and the United
States. Largely lost in the frenzy is an unhappy fact: The Iranian
mullahocracy has been at war with this country since it came to power in
1979.

The problem is that the weapons available to Tehran for prosecuting its
jihad against "the Great Satan" are no longer simply truck bombs and
suicide vests. Its proxy army, Hezbollah, has taken over Lebanon and
operates terror cells from Iraq to Latin America and even inside the
United States. With help from Communist China and Russia, its Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps wields an array of anti-ship missiles, mines
and go-fast boats capable of discouraging oil traffic from transiting
the Straits of Hormuz  if not actually sealing that vital waterway for
protracted periods.

Not least, Iran is now armed with ballistic missiles of ever-longer
range. Those missiles have been developed with help from North Korea
for the purpose of delivering the nuclear weapons the mullahs have been
developing covertly for over 20 years. Once such weapons are in hand 
perhaps just a matter of months now  Tehran will be in a position to
execute its threat to wipe Israel (a.k.a. "the Little Satan") off the
map.

As a blue-ribbon commission told the House Armed Services Committee last
Thursday, moreover, by launching its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles
off a ship, the Iranian regime could soon be able to make good on
another of its oft-stated pledges: To bring about "a world without
America."

The commissioners warned (http://www.empcommission.org/reports.php)
that, by detonating a sea-launched nuclear weapon in space over the
United States, Iran could unleash an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
that would have a "catastrophic" effect on much of the Nation's energy
infrastructure. In short order, the ensuing lack of electricity would
cause a devastating ripple effect on our telecommunications, sanitation
and water, transportation, food and health care sectors and the
Internet. Iranian missile tests suggest an emergent capability to
execute such an attack.

If we are already at war with the Iranian regime and the destructive
power of our enemy is about to increase exponentially, what can we do to
about it? For various reasons, it remains undesirable to use our own
military force against the mullahs if it can possibly be avoided. If
that alternative is to be made unnecessary, however, five things must be
done as a matter of the utmost urgency:

Three have to do with greatly intensifying the financial pressure on
Tehran. First, we need to discourage investments in companies that
provide the advanced technology and capital essential to the oil exports
that underpin the Iranian economy. The campaign aimed at divesting such
stocks from private and public pension fund portfolios and, instead,
investing "terror-free" had a signal victory last week when the head of
the French oil conglomerate Total announced that "Today, we would be
taking too much political risk to invest in Iran."

By moving billions of dollars into certified terror-free funds like
those offered by the United Missouri Bank, U.S. investors can effect
more of this sort of corporate behavior-modification. Senator Joseph
Lieberman is expected shortly to introduce legislation that will offer
federal employees a terror-free investment option in their Thrift
Savings Plan. Every American should have such a ready choice  and be
encouraged to exercise it.

Second, we need to deflate the price of oil that is sustaining the
Iranian regime. We can do so by ending the monopoly oil-derived
gasoline enjoys in the global transportation sector. (This imperative
is the subject of a hilarious video by David and Jerry Zucker at
www.NozzleRage.com .) By adopting an Open
Fuel Standard, Congress can set a standard assuring that new cars sold
both in America and the rest of the world will be capable of using
alcohols that can be made practically anywhere (for example, ethanol,
methanol or butanol), as well as gasoline. Long before vast numbers of
such Flexible Fuel Vehicles are on the roads, the OPEC cartel-induced
speculative bubble that has contributed to the recent run-up in the
price per barrel of oil will be lanced.

Third, we must counter the effort being made by the Iranians and other
Islamists to use so-called Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) as a means to
wage "financial jihad" against us. Before SCF instruments proliferate
further in our capital markets, in the process legitimating and helping
to underwrite the repressive, anti-constitutional and subversive program
the Iranian mullahs (among others) call Shariah, that program must be
recognized for what it is  sedition - and prosecuted as such. The
effect would be chilling for Iranian and other SCF transactions in
Western markets world-wide.

Fourth, we need to deploy as quickly as possible effective anti-missile
defenses  both in Europe and at sea. Russian objections
notwithstanding, we cannot afford to delay any further in protecting
ourselves and our allies against EMP and other missile-delivered
threats.

Finally, we must mount an intensive, comprehensive and urgent effort to
aid the Iranian people in liberating themselves from the theocrats that
have afflicted their nation for nearly thirty years and made it a pariah
internationally. Supplying information technologies, assistance to
students, teachers, unionists and others willing to stand up to the
regime, aid to restive minorities and covert operations should all be in
play.

By adopting these measures, we may yet be able to bring about regime
change in Iran  the only hope for avoiding full-fledged combat against
the Islamic Republic there. But we should be under no illusion: We
will not avoid war; it has been thrust upon us by the mullahs for many
years now. We may, however, be able to avoid the far worse condition
they wish to inflict by unleashing the weapons now coming into their
arsenal.

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